Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of William John Kennedy’s photographs of Warhol is their seamless blend of the artist with his work. Kennedy aimed to ‘involve [Warhol] totally, physically, with his artwork.’ This intent is evident in Homage to Warhol’s American Man, where Warhol’s head is incorporated into one of his notable 1960s portraits, The American Man (Portrait of Watson Powell), 1964.

In American Man, Warhol appears in silhouette through a hole cut into a grid of photographs of businessman Watson Powell, with whom Andy shared an appreciation of business. This device mirrors Warhol’s screen-printing method within the photographic frame. Kennedy’s staging of the artist holding his work, with Warhol glimpsed rather than fully revealed, creates a layered portrait.

Warhol’s painting of American Man was commissioned in May 1964 by Watson Powell Jr. for his father, the head of the American Republic Insurance Company, and was intended for display in the company’s headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa. The painting comprised 32 canvases in a vertical grid, resembling several important works from 1963 and 1964, including Warhol’s portraits of Ethel Scull and Jackie Kennedy, and the small flower paintings at Leo Castelli Gallery in December 1964, all using gridded accumulations of smaller canvases to create mural-sized paintings.

Recalling the creation of this work, Kennedy observed test prints of the Watson Powell image on the studio floor and suggested to Warhol that they staple them to a cardboard support, creating an alternative horizontal arrangement of the commissioned portrait. Kennedy left a rectangular space for Warhol to position his head, establishing a striking juxtaposition of two influential American figures: a corporate chief and an avant-garde ‘factory’ owner. The photograph underscores how Warhol and his Factory served as a nexus for an increasingly diverse cross-section of American society and foreshadows his later proliferation of commissioned portraits, which led to his recognition as the greatest portraitist of the 20th century.